


Recipe (for Disaster?)

by Marsalias



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cross Posted on FFN, Gen, The Fentons Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/pseuds/Marsalias
Summary: What happens when Danny's parents are the first to learn that Danny's half-ghost? A Holiday Truce fic for wastefulreverie.
Relationships: Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton
Comments: 23
Kudos: 439





	Recipe (for Disaster?)

**Author's Note:**

> Just realized that I forgot to put this here. Oops.

**Recipe (For Disaster?)**

.

Before he opened his eyes, Danny knew he had died.

It had hurt. It had hurt a lot.

It still hurt.

His muscles (or whatever had replaced them) spasmed, grinding his skin into the harsh tile floor. Something else moved inside him, something cold, powerful, and lighter than air. It bubbled and roiled, twisted and turned, settling into his burnt and burning bones.

(Still, he was behind himself, in the portal, pressing that button, and screaming screaming screaming forever and ever two worlds straining through his brain and it _hurt._ )

He twitched, pressing his face into the floor, the rough edge of the tile and the grout abrading his cheek. A gust of air, a wheeze, just shy of being a whistle, escaped his throat.

(Why was he breathing if he was dead?)

He forced himself up onto his hands and knees. The tiles seemed to sting, biting into his flesh, his skin sticking to the inside of his gloves.

(Burning and tingling, outlines of lightning creeping along his skin. _No._ )

Slowly, he opened his eyes. The light against them made them feel like they were cooking.

(Like in the portal. _Stop. Stop._ )

His hands wavered into view, rippling beyond his tears, which dripped to the ground from the tip of his nose. They looked wrong. Why did they look wrong?

The gloves- They were white. A weird, silvery white that glistened and shone. His knees and elbows were gray-black, but somehow still glowed. His _tears_ were glowing.

He knew he had died, knew he was dead, but seeing it was something different. He shuddered, and climbed to his feet. To his feet, and then farther. He floated, an inch above the floor. A squeak escaped his lips, and he dropped. More than an inch. He had fallen more than halfway through the floor before he managed to curl up on the floor again. His limbs flickered. Was that his eyes playing tricks, or..?

Once more, he stood up, this time successfully, and stumbled to the deep lab sink in the corner of the basement. There was a mirror hung above it. A dirty, tarnished mirror, but still. He needed to know what he looked like.

He gripped the edge of the sink and looked into the mirror. An alien face looked back. Instead of blue eyes, he looked into great green disks, the same color as the portal swirling behind him. Instead of black, his hair was the same moonlight white as his gloves. His skin was burnt tan, rather than milky. His freckles, usually almost unnoticeable, were a dim green. Shaking, he reached for the reflection.

That was really h-

_Light._

Bright and blinding.

Almost as bright as the inside of the portal as it turned on.

(Almost as bright as the light that had killed him.)

He doubled over and vomited into the sink. Huh. He hadn't known ghosts could do that. Shouldn't his stomach be back with his body, if it hadn't been entirely vaporized by the portal?

Was- Was he dying again? He remembered his parents talking about how ghosts needed ectoplasm to survive. Should he have gone to the portal instead of the mirror?

Dazed, he looked up into the mirror. Blue eyes looked back at him through a fringe of dark hair, his skin was almost paper white and slick with sweat. His pulse throbbed visibly in the arteries of his throat.

... what.

He was-? Was that-? He didn't understand.

(Was he _alive?_ )

Part of him wanted to drop to the ground, but he was afraid that if he did that, he wouldn't get back up. He shuffled around the sink, and slid against the wall until he reached a counter, and used that to prop himself up the rest of the way to the stairs. He crawled up them on his hands and knees, ignoring how burnt and melted his left glove was.

At the door, he rested. He put his forehead against the cool metal door, and breathed. In, out, in, out. With his right hand, he felt up the door, searching for the doorknob. As soon as he found it, he twisted it, not thinking about the consequences, and the door swung out under his weight, dumping him onto the kitchen floor.

He curled and wheezed.

"Danny?!"

.

Danny fiddled with the IV in his arm. Maddie took his hand with both of hers, and pulled it away.

"Alright, Danny," said Maddie, "tell us _exactly_ what happened."

They were in Danny's room, which had been stuffed full of various ectoplasm-run and ghost-related medical machinery. His parents had stripped him of his hazmat and clothes, and gone over him with every scanner they had available, before finally putting him to bed in his pajamas.

There hadn't, as much as they searched, as ragged and burned as his clothing had been, been a single mark on him, inside or out. His temperature had been weirdly low, he was dehydrated, and he couldn't stop shaking, couldn't stop the pictures that flashed through his mind every time he blinked, afterimages of his death using his eyelids as a projector screen, but there wasn't a scratch, or burn, or bruise anywhere to be found.

Danny's eyes flicked from his mother to his father, one sitting by his bed, the other looming awkwardly in a corner, unable to find a safe place to sit.

"You're not in trouble," said Maddie, reassuringly. She had done so several times. "We just want to know what happened, so we can help you, and figure out what's going on."

Danny bit his lip. "I- Um. You and Dad, you were upset. You were really, really upset. When the portal didn't work, I mean, and I- Sometimes, sometimes when you're working on things, you miss things." He tilted his head to the side, finding the wall near his bed suddenly very fascinating. "Like, obvious things. Like- Like not plugging things in, or missing some wiring, or, you know... Forgetting about, you know, a button... on the inside of the portal... I thought I'd check." He trailed off.

"Oh, honey," said Maddie. "You hit it?"

"Not on purpose!" protested Danny. "I put on my suit, and looked around- I wasn't going to touch anything!- but I tripped over something on the ground. And it- It turned on. It turned on and it-" Tears started to prick at his eyes. "It turned on, and it... hurt. It hurt a lot and I-" How to describe what he had felt? What he had seen? The way he had been sure, absolutely sure, he had died? How, for a split second, he thought he had heard someone else screaming with him? "Then I was on the floor in front of the portal. And I got up, and I went to the mirror, and I realize I had- I had snow-white hair and glowing green eyes, and my skin was all weird, and I- Before I got to the mirror there were weird things happening." He bunched up his sheets in his free hand and rubbed them between his fingers.

"Weird things like what?" prompted Maddie, after he fell silent.

"Like... For a second I couldn't see my hands, even though I was looking at them. Then I kind of... I floated? Like, I flew. When I got back to the ground, I almost fell through the floor like- like I was in a video game with the collision turned off!" He bit his lip. "I thought I was dead," he admitted, quietly. "I thought I was a ghost."

"No way, Danny-boy!" boomed Jack. "You're a Fenton! Fenton's don't become ghosts! Besides, you're definitely alive now!"

"Jack's right," said Maddie, patting Danny's hand. "After all, you can't be alive _and_ a ghost at the same time. I'm sure it was just a side effect of being exposed to so much ectoplasm all at once. A temporary thing." She sighed. "We'll look into it. Just focus on feeling better, alright, Danny? And then, maybe, we'll do a refresher on lab safety." She made a face. "You'll probably have to be decontaminated, too, but that can wait. It's a good thing school doesn't start for another month."

"Okay," said Danny, already dreading whatever decontamination entailed.

"Okay," repeated Maddie. "Jack, will you stay here? I want to go down and check on the portal, make sure it doesn't-"

Something inside Danny went deeply, impossibly cold. He arched back, grasping at his chest as whatever had come to life inside it pulsed and grew, rippling and buzzing as it intersected his skin, light throwing his room into stark contrast.

It stopped. Danny was wearing gloves. White gloves, over black sleeves. He looked up at his parents, flinched back at their shocked expressions, and _kept going,_ floating into the corner of the ceiling above his bed.

"Mom?" he said, hugging himself, confused and alarmed. "Dad?" His voice broke. Where was the IV? Had he pulled it out of his arm as he levitated?

 _"Danny?"_ said Jack, oddly hushed.

Danny nodded convulsively. "What's happening to me?" he asked, desperate. The portal had done this, so they had to know, didn't they? They had built the thing, pouring their lives into it.

(Danny was honestly surprised his mother and father hadn't left to check on the portal earlier.)

Jack stepped up to the bed, and reached for Danny, gently taking him by the elbow and pulling him down to the bed. "It'll be alright, Danny. We're Fentons! We'll figure this out!"

.

Jack and Maddie frowned at the latest machine readout as Danny perched on his stool and fiddled with one of the wires attached to him. Jazz was sitting angrily in the corner of the room, her arms crossed. She'd been in denial about this whole thing, thinking Danny had finally succumbed to their parents' particular brand of insanity, until Danny had accidentally... _transformed_ in front of her. Now she was just permanently angry at Jack and Maddie.

"Well?" said Danny. He'd been living with this thing for almost a month and he'd gotten better at preventing himself from _changing,_ but he didn't want to be like this for _ever._ He especially didn't want to be like this at school. Middle school was hard enough _without_ a condition that turned him into a ghost once a day. "What is it? Can you fix me?"

Maddie pursed her lips, and shook her head. She looked at Danny, then walked to him, pulling out a (significantly shorter) stool to sit on so she would be at eye-level with him.

"Danny," she said, then paused for much longer than was comfortable. "Danny, I'm sorry. We can't do anything. Not yet."

"Why _not?_ " asked Danny, trying not to hyperventilate.

"Simply speaking," said Maddie, "we don't have the tools to separate you from... whatever this is." She briefly touched Danny's glowing knee. "We're still not sure what's causing this and..." she trailed off.

"And what?" asked Danny, rather more harshly than he had planned.

"We aren't sure," she said, looking back at Jack, who shrugged, "but we think it might be keeping you alive. Some of the blood tests we did, when we filtered out the ectoplasm in the samples..." She looked pale. "There were a few promising trials, but after a while..."

"They disintegrated!" said Jack.

"Oh," said Danny, sagging. "So I would-?"

"We don't know that," said Maddie, quickly, "but we'd rather be safe than sorry, and it doesn't seem to be doing you any harm, now. In fact, your body seems to have adapted to it quite well, all things considered. It's just inconvenient."

"But we can help! We've got all sorts of things we can invent! Just you wait, Danny-boy!"

Maddie sighed. "If only we had more data on ghosts, then maybe-"

Jazz snorted. "Typical! Even after this, all you care about are your inventions and ghosts!" She stormed up the stair, slamming the door hard behind her.

"Oh, dear," said Maddie.

"Why don't- Why don't you go talk to her?" suggested Danny. He would be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying the extra attention he was getting from his parents, lately, even if he hated the reason for it. He understood how Jazz felt right now.

Maddie went upstairs.

"Well, Dan-o, don't you worry," said Jack, jauntily. "We Fenton men eat inconvenience for breakfast! Why, when I was a boy..." Jack rambled on, barely pausing for breath.

Feeling somewhat guilty, Danny tuned him out. He had heard all the stories before, and they rarely made sense. Instead, he turned inwards.

He was stuck like this, stuck as a freak. Could he even be called human anymore? Maybe when he looked normal, when he looked like himself, but in this ghost form? Not a chance. He had tried to distract himself with the idea that he had cool 'powers,' but he barely had any control over them.

What if his parents _never_ figured out how to fix him? What if he was like this forever?

He would never be able to be an astronaut. Not with all the weird physical things that had shown up in his body over the last couple of weeks. Not with his low temperature, weird heartbeat, and contaminated blood.

A chill went through Danny's body, and he shivered, exhaling vapor. He tensed. Before, he'd been feeling sorry for himself, but he'd also felt... secure? Safe? Whatever. Now he felt on-edge. Something was wrong. Or about to be wrong.

He slipped off the stool, feet hitting the ground without a sound. Barely thinking about it, he phased off the wires and his hazmat suit reformed around his body. Something was wrong. Something was _dangerous,_ a _danger,_ a _threat._ His eyes roved over the inventions piled against the walls, the beakers of ectoplasmic sludge, whatever Jack was fiddling with, and finally landed on the portal.

Danny narrowed his eyes, and stepped forward, only to leap back as an over-sized, sucker-covered tentacle burst through the portal, and latched, perfectly silent, onto the wall and ceiling above. It flexed as Danny watched it, pulling from the portal a translucent, glowing, green octopus. A second one dragged itself out a moment later, and they floated in front of the portal, as if in water, malevolent red eyes scanning the lab.

Danny stayed still, holding his breath, hoping they'd go back to the Ghost Zone. Each octopus was bigger than him!

Jack kept talking.

The octopuses glare fell on him. Their tentacles reached out.

_No._

.

"Tell me what happened again," said Maddie, as she cleaned a tiny cut over Danny's eyebrow.

"A couple of ghost octopuses came through the portal and tried to attack Dad, so I fought them and threw them back into the Ghost Zone."

"And you didn't notice this at all, Jack?" The question was delivered in a tone halfway between exasperation and real anger.

"Not until I looked up and saw Danny standing by the portal."

Standing was a _far_ too generous term for what he'd been doing at the end of the fight, but Danny didn't dispute it.

"We'll have to pull the lab camera footage," said Maddie "But, you're alright, Danny?"

He nodded. Surprisingly, he felt better than he had in a long while, as if using his powers had taken a weight off his shoulders.

"Okay," said Maddie. "We'll need to make some doors for that." She frowned at the portal. "It isn't actually supposed to let anything in."

"It isn't?" asked Danny, surprised.

Maddie shook her head. "It was supposed to be a window, not a door." She put the swab aside, and stuck a band-aid over the cut. "Now, if you get any odd bruising, or start to feel odd, tell us right away."

.

After all the scrutiny at home, going to school was a relief. Sort of. At least it was a _change._ Every day, Jack and Maddie loaded Danny down with all sorts of things that were supposed to prevent his powers from surfacing and a cellphone with strict instructions to call and come home if anything unexpected happened.

For the first week, nothing did. It was school as usual. Banal, boring, and a little harder than middle school, but still. On the upside, he finally got to hang out with his friends again. Danny had been isolated from Sam and Tucker throughout his recovery from his 'illness.'

(Actually, if he thought about it, it kind of was an illness, wasn't it?)

But the second week, when Sam proudly revealed that she had convinced the school board to do a 'vegetarian' week? When she was, consequently, attacked by a ghostly lunch lady? One that interrupted their onslaught to ask if they wanted cookies?

Yeah, that was unexpected.

Sadly, Danny was too busy trying to keep her from killing Sam to call his parents, who would probably have done a much better job at containing the ghost. Well, at least his mom would have. Danny wasn't so sure about his dad. He had seen Jack practice with the ectoweapons before, after all.

So, he fought the ghost. He punched, he kicked, he threw random objects, and, finding all of that generally ineffective, he grabbed his friends and ran. Well. Flew.

Then he passed out.

.

"You understand that you can't tell anyone," said Maddie to Sam and Tucker, some time later. They and the Fentons, including Jazz and Danny, were seated around the kitchen table, three boxes of pizza stacked between them.

"Well, yeah," said Tucker. From his slightly glazed look, Danny guessed that he was still processing the situation. "It'd be, like, in a comic book or something, right? There'd be people wanting to study you. And, you know, cut you u-"

"Tucker! What is _wrong_ with you?" demanded Sam, giving him a shove. "You can't just _say_ that!"

Danny made a face. "Well, I don't think anyone is going to, like, dissect me or anything, but, yeah, basically." He shrugged. His parents had talked a lot about hunting ghosts before, but now they rarely brought the subject up. At least in those terms.

"Don't worry, Danny, we can keep secrets," promised Sam. "You know that."

Tucker nodded in agreement. "But, like, how does this all work? How did this happen? And those powers? Those were _wicked_ man."

"It's a bit of a long story," said Danny. It wasn't. He just didn't want to talk about his maybe-maybe-not-death. "But what are we going to do about the lunch lady ghost? What if she comes back?"

"We talked to your school and asked them if we could do a sweep!" said Jack. "But they didn't believe us about the ghost!"

Maddie picked at her lip. "I think the _best_ thing to do right would be to return the menu to the way it was. That would probably appease the ghost, at least temporarily-"

"What!" exclaimed Sam. "No way! I campaigned for vegetarian week all summer! We can't adopt a policy of appeasement! When will it end?"

"Well, _I_ think that's a great idea, Mrs F," said Tucker. "The old menu is much better than this one, anyway."

Sam whirled on him. "Say that to my face, meat-eater!"

"Alright. I will. Your food _sucks_ and tastes like dirt! Also, it made a ghost try to kill us!"

"You're just narrow minded!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

.

When Danny arrived at school the next day, he didn't know what was worse, that his friends had both somehow whipped up _utterly insane_ protests in front of the school overnight, or that his parents had decided to camp out in front of the school in the 'Ghost Assault Vehicle' (actually a heavily modified and armored RV, and a hazard to all other road traffic) all day, in case the ghost was still there and still angry.

A few minutes later he decided that, no, the worst part was how each of his friends were pressuring him to choose their side or face an unspecified doom.

Actually, no. The worst part was that Tucker's protesters had brought a lot of real meat that the lunch lady ghost could use to make a giant meat monster.

This sucked. A lot. But what could Danny do but fight?

.

Danny put the cap on the thermos, breathing hard, and stared at the invention. That had been... bizarre, at best. But what was his life _except_ bizarre, at this point?

His friends came running up to him, followed shortly by his parents.

"Danny!" said Sam. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah!" said Danny, meaning it. "I'm fine. Better than fine! I-" he looked down at the thermos, turning it over in his hands. It gave him an odd satisfaction, knowing he had stopped the ghost from causing any more damage, stopped her from hurting anyone, stopped her from hurting his friends. He looked back up at his friends and family, at the other people still running around behind them. He had _protected_ them. "I feel pretty good, actually. Exhausted, but good."

"Really?" said Maddie. "You've just used your... abilities more than you ever have before. We don't know how that will affect you."

Danny felt his good mood wilt somewhat. "It's just," he said, trying to rally, "I feel like I finally know why this happened to me. Why I got these powers. I mean, imagine if you got the portal opened without," he gestured to himself, hoping to get the point across, even though he was in human form, " _this._ How would this have worked out?"

Jack and Maddie exchanged a glance, and Danny could practically see what they were thinking. None of their weapons or techniques, bar the thermos _after_ Danny had done... Well, Danny wasn't quite sure what he had done with it to make it work, but it had, and it was the only thing that had been really effective against the lunch lady. If Danny hadn't been here, hadn't had his powers, this could have been bad.

Danny glanced at the red smears of raw meat scattered across the school's front lawn. Really bad.

"We probably would have worked something out," said Maddie, but Danny could tell she was dubious. "I think we ought to go back home and give you a checkup."

"Mom," groaned Danny, "I'm fine."

"I still want to check. Would you two like a ride home, or..?"

Sam snorted. "Honestly, they're probably not even going to cancel school."

"Yeah," said Tucker. "I mean, what are they going to say, that they were attacked by a giant meat monster? Please."

.

"Hey, Mom?" asked Danny, as he ate breakfast the next morning. "Do you think ghost cookies are, like, a thing? I mean, what would they even be like?"

"Ghost cookies?" repeated Maddie. "Where did you even get that idea?"

Danny shrugged. "I don't know. Something that ghost said the other day. Never mind, it's not important."

"If you say so, sweetie."

.

"Jack," said Maddie, after Danny had left. "Have you noticed that Danny seems a bit depressed, ever since the accident?"

"Depressed? No! Quieter that usual, but not depressed!" Jack looked down. "But I'm not really the most observant person, I guess! Why would he be depressed?"

"Jack, really. Wouldn't you be depressed?"

The length of time it took Jack to respond was unusual, and showed that he was really thinking about the question. "I guess I would be. I'd be scared, too, not knowing what's going on." He paused. "I'm really glad he didn't get ecto-acne, though, like Vladdie! That would have been really hard."

"I think it's because of how well his body adapted to the ectoplasm," she said, then shook her head, pulling herself out of scientist mode. She sat down on the couch next to Jack. "I don't think we've been very helpful, either."

"What do you mean?" asked Jack. "We've been doing our best to help!"

"Emotionally, I mean," said Maddie. "You remember all the things we've said about ghosts. About how ghosts are evil. About what we wanted to do to ghosts."

"But Danny knows we'd never do that to him! And he's not a ghost!"

"Yes, but he's still... Some of our tests... I guess the best way to put it is that he's a sort of hybrid, and remembering what we've said, it must be disheartening." She paused. "Jazz gave me some papers on internalized racism, and some of it made me wonder. We haven't really taken any of it _back,_ and it isn't like we ever had any empirical evidence for it! Just anecdotes, from your ancestors."

"All the ghosts we've seen so far have been bad!" protested Jack.

"Not Danny," said Maddie, "and based on our original theories, what happened to him shouldn't be possible. Based on Danny's description, the lunch lady ghost was more complex than we thought a ghost could be, too. We need to get rid of our assumptions, Jack, and we need to make sure Danny _knows_ we aren't making those assumptions anymore."

Jack picked up one of the pillows on the couch, and began to fiddle with the embroidery. "I guess," said Jack. "But if he's really depressed, do you think it's going to be enough?"

"No," said Maddie. She slouched into the couch, almost sinking into the gap between the cushions. "I was thinking about something he said yesterday, and it occurred to me, maybe we're being too negative about this."

"It is a negative thing!"

"Yes, but it could be something he's stuck with for the rest of his life! We don't know if we can ever fix this, if we can ever remove this, and if we can't... Maybe we should focus on some of the _positive_ aspects of this." She put her hand to her head. "I just- I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to make him feel better about this, after I shot him down, yesterday."

"You didn't shoot him down," said Jack, confused. "Neither of us hit him at all!"

"Metaphorically speaking," said Maddie. "I brushed off what he said about getting his powers for a reason. I ignored him."

"Well," said Jack, "when I was first diagnosed with autism, my mom made me my favorite fudge, and that made me feel better about it! Fudge always makes things better!" He frowned, and scratched his cheek. "I don't know if it will help Danny, though. This isn't really the same thing."

Maybe... Or maybe the two situations were more alike than they seemed at first glance. Maddie struggled up out of the gap between the couch cushions. "There was something he said, earlier, before he left."

"About his powers?"

"No," said Maddie. "Jack, do you think it would be possible for us to make cookies with ectoplasm?"

.

Maddie would admit that she was not the best cook in the world. In fact, cookies were the _only_ food item she had consistent success with. Everything else had a slight tendency to come to life, explode, catch on fire, disintegrate, turn to mush, or somehow become so ectocontaminated as to be inedible. Or just be bad.

But now she was _purposefully_ trying to contaminate a batch of cookies with ectoplasm, in a way that would make them edible and nutritious to him. In a way that would show him that she and Jack weren't _against_ him, his new situation, and his ghost powers. In a way that would let them reconnect. In a way that would show Danny that they accepted him, that they would _always_ accept him.

It was a lot to put on a batch of cookies. Especially when she wasn't sure they were even possible.

She poured over Danny's latest test results, picking at her lower lip. She didn't want to introduce anything harmful into Danny's system. That was the first priority, above appearance, taste, or any other condition.

Purified ectoplasm would probably be a safe choice to start with.

.

It had taken more time than Maddie had expected to actually get a cookie that worked as a cookie. Two months, to be exact. Two months in which her poor baby had been repeatedly beaten up by ghosts. Her little cookie project was pushed back by more necessary tasks. Such as setting up protections for Amity Park that wouldn't affect Danny and battling violent ghosts.

On a more and honestly shocking positive note, Danny had befriended one of the ghosts. A little gray ghost that haunted the school. If Danny hadn't already scrapped Jack and Maddie's theories regarding the morality of ghosts, this ghost would have done it.

In any case, here, now, in this first week of November, Maddie had a batch of fragrant and faintly-glowing cookies. They _were_ rather plain. Maddie had wanted to limit the number of variables in the cookies, the number of things the ectoplasm could react poorly to.

But they wouldn't be a success until Danny tasted them.

She sat down at the table, exhausted. She could only imagine how Danny felt. She knew he snuck out at night to fight ghosts that their scanners missed but his 'ghost sense' picked up, and that on top of all the fights he had during the day and all his schoolwork.

The cookies sat delectably on the counter. She dearly wished she could do more to help him than _make cookies_. Yes, she was doing other things, but they didn't seem like enough. Not nearly enough.

Especially after all the trouble she and Jack had given him during their anniversary, and the trouble he had gotten into in the _Ghost Zone_ of all places. With the _Ghost Law._ Or at least a ghost that claimed to be the law and attempted to arrest Danny. Maddie was still wrapping her head around the idea that ghosts had a society complex enough to support such a thing or a lie about such a thing, as the case may be.

She rested her elbows on the table, and put her head in her hands. Here she was, making herself depressed, right after her big victory. Or before her _hopeful_ victory, she corrected herself.

The front door swung open and Maddie looked up.

"Wow, that smells good!" said Danny. "What are you making, Mom?"

She heard a thump, probably his backpack, but not the two that usually followed it as Sam and Tucker came in.

"Cookies," said Maddie, standing. "Are Sam and Tucker not with you?"

"No, they had to go home today," he said. "Apparently their families are missing them." He walked into the kitchen, rubbing his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" asked Maddie. "Was there a fight?"

"Nah, I just banged into the corner of the lockers at school. It's been pretty quiet today." He quickly rapped on one of the cabinets. "Knock on wood, right." His brow furrowed. "Are those cookies glowing?"

"Yes, I put some ectoplasm in them. I'd been thinking about it since you mentioned them."

"Really? But that was months ago." He sat down at the counter, and poked at one of the cookies. There was an odd expression on his face. "Can I- Can I try one?"

"I made them for you, sweetie. Just- Only one for now. I don't know how they taste, and they should be safe, but..."

Danny's lips quirked up, but something wavered in his eyes. Maddie's heart dropped. Did he think that she was using him as a guinea pig?

"I get it, you don't know how I'll react. Better safe than sorry, and all that. I had wondered, though, seeing all that ghost food in Walker's prison..." He picked up a cookie, and nibbled at it. He took a larger bite. Another one. His chin trembled.

"Is it not good?" asked Maddie.

"No," said Danny, his voice cracking. "It's good. It's really good." A tear tickled down his cheek. He sniffed and took another bite of his cookie. He hiccuped.

"Danny..?"

"I'm okay!" he said around the cookie in his mouth. "I'm okay. I just- Just-" He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Maddie rubbed Danny's back. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"It's just- You made this for me. And it's not- It's not a weapon. It's a ghost thing, but it's not a weapon, and-"

"Oh, sweetie," said Maddie. "I'm so sorry that you thought that we..." she trailed off, not knowing what to say, even if it was what she had been afraid of.

"It's just- Ghost cookies." He laughed a little, and shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth. "It's good," he said, slightly muffled. "Are you sure I can't have another one?"

"Maybe in a couple of hours? You don't want to ruin your dinner."

Danny laughed.


End file.
